6/5/2020

Dear St. Joseph Parish Family,

We are living through troubled times. We’ve all been shocked at the murder of George Floyd and the injustice it illuminates. This rank injustice raises to the fore our nation’s failure to consistently provide justice. While claiming the high ideals of freedom and equality we have frequently failed to live up to them.

What are we to do? Is it possible to do anything? How should we understand what’s happening as Catholics? Many parishioners recently have asked me these questions. I want to consider these questions, not from the normal political perspectives you can find everywhere, but from the perspective of our Catholic faith. The truths of our faith are deeper than politics and laws – they define who we are as humans and what it means to be made in God’s image and called to an eternal destiny. I will try to refrain from writing too much; however, my thesis at the end of my seminary studies concerned structures of sin, and I gave a related talk entitled "Trust not in Princes: Hope and Despair in American Politics". In other words, I apologize here for trying to say too much.

We are all creatures made by God in His image. That is why racism is a sin – an offense against God. All humans are created in the image of God and therefore possess dignity. This dignity is not earned and cannot be lost – it belongs to every single human person simply and solely because all of us are made in the image of God. Some think this truth is self-evident, but this truth only came to light with the Gospel. The ancient pagan world recognized no such universal equality or dignity. At the height of Athens’ philosophical glory, at a time when Socrates and Plato were still in living memory, even someone as brilliant and erudite as Aristotle could write that some men were born to be slaves. Their ancient histories and epics had no place for anyone but great men – everyone else was not worth mentioning. 

The Gospel broke that elitist perspective. Jesus was born to obscure parents in an obscure village on the outskirts of the Roman Empire and died the most shameful death possible – being executed between two criminals on a cross. His apostles were fishermen, men of no standing nor status. In the Scriptures God constantly displays His disregard for human status, establishing that our dignity is not based on human status but is a part of our very humanity itself.

Our worth in God’s eyes is not the callous disregard humans often afford each other. The downtrodden, poor, slaves, women, disabled, and many others flocked to Christianity because it declared that they had a worth and equality that no one had ever proclaimed before. 

There is certainly disparity between people – we all have different talents, gifts, weaknesses, histories, etc., but underneath all that divides us there exists a common dignity in our common humanity. This sacred bond between us all is fundamental. It forms the basis of God’s command for us to love one another. We are all brothers and sisters. Differences in wealth, status, culture, race, talent, etc. do not constitute what is most true and important about us – our common humanity made in God’s image constitutes what is most important.

To lose sight of this sacred truth is disastrous. If we cannot recognize everyone’s basic dignity then we can certainly never love them. Those whom we cannot love we will start to use for our ends, or view as enemies to be dealt with. Hatred and indifference will reign. Human dignity must be respected always. Its recognition is the only antidote to racism, and we must respect everyone’s human dignity even when fighting racism. Otherwise, we undermine the very reason why racism itself is evil. Human dignity must form the foundation of our life together, in the field of law enforcement and politics and everywhere else.

As Catholics we know that we live in a fallen world, a world marked by evil, suffering, and death. We can see the presence of evil both in our own lives and in the world. There are many explanations for evil; every religion, philosophy, and political theory has to grapple with this question. Most of the answers given fail because they are too shallow. For instance, the problem with Marxism is that it is too moderate. Marxists recognize only material reality – the world we can see and touch in this life. Their shallow vision of the world and humanity leads to a shallow understanding of evil. For a Marxist evil is remedied through economic and political restructuring, even radical restructuring. If only it were that easy! 

Evil runs much deeper than social structures. The problem of evil runs through every human heart. All social structures are built by humans and reflect the humanity of those who build them. The possibility of evil within every human soul must be addressed in order to bring about justice. Structures follow the hearts of those who build and operate them, and their hearts determine whether those structures are just or not. 

Society is a reflection of the souls of those who comprise it, and what matters most is what each individual chooses to love. If every person in a society is just, then that society will be just. If the people love money before all else, their society will be marked by greed. GDP will become their idol, and all considerations of justice will yield to the desire for riches. If the people love glory and conquest, then peace and justice will yield to militarization and martial conquest. What people love most defines their society.

Healing a broken society requires the healing of our hearts. In order to heal our hearts, we must love God first because it is God who empowers us with the freedom to love our neighbor. God’s grace transforms our hearts; it frees us from the selfishness, sin, and vice that imprison us within ourselves. Grace empowers us to give ourselves to others. That is why love is so exhilarating – love grants the energy and joy of going outside ourselves. When we love God first we do not cease to love others but gain the ability to do so. As each individual is transformed by God’s grace, society will start to reflect that love growing within its members. 

What we require now is the humility to accept God’s love. We must reject pride that tempts us to think that we can save the world without God, as if we were God. When we take upon ourselves the role of God, when we try to force our will upon the world, to build it up by our strength rather than through divine love, we merely exchange one injustice for another. The reason why raw human power and coercion cannot effect positive change is because love, the defining principle of a society, flows by its nature from freedom and thus cannot be coerced. We can force compliance with rules, but we cannot force love. Love can only be accepted and freely given. We must accept God’s love, be transformed into people capable of love, and then our love can transform the world. Saints have done more to change the world for the better than any mere political provocateur. If we want to change the world, we must start with our own hearts and seek holiness. Everything flows from that. 

Our world is fallen and will remain fallen while all of us work out our salvation, our ability to love. The perfect society, utopia, is only found in heaven where the hearts of all its inhabitants have been transformed by God’s grace to love perfectly. In that society of perfect love there is perfect justice and mercy because there is perfect love. Down here we work toward perfect love, but we find it perfected only when we enter the Heavenly Jerusalem, our true homeland. 

So how do we change the world? How do we fight evil in the world? By following Christ’s commandments: love God before all else and our neighbors as ourselves. Loving God empowers us to love our neighbors by transforming us to love like God. As each of us is transformed so too is our community and nation. If you want to change the world, be a saint.

People feel overwhelmed by the evil before us. The pervasiveness of hatred, whether racism or otherwise, seems total. How do we cope with this threat spiritually?

We must start with ourselves, allowing God to heal and transform our hearts. If we will not allow God to heal and transform ourselves, how can we expect anyone else to change, much less our whole society? Additionally, as individuals we have almost no control over all our society. We must begin with what is within our power – ourselves. 

At this moment two great dangers threaten our hearts: anger and despair. Anger in itself is good – anger is a natural human passion whose purpose is to provide us the strength to overcome injustice. Anger can be the spur pushing us to work for justice. However, when anger works against justice it becomes corrupted and a vice. Anger that leads one to act unjustly has contradicted its very purpose. In our fallen state anger easily exceeds its warrant to seek what is just and we must be careful not to use anger to justify injustice. 

When anger becomes corrupted it narrows us within ourselves; our inner life becomes focused on the object of our anger, and we start to make bad decisions. How many times in hindsight have we regretted what anger drove us to do? Anger that leaves us trapped within ourselves, narrowly focused on an event, becomes a form of inner slavery. We become bound to the injustice that caused our anger. We do not act for justice but become obsessed with anger itself. Our minds become consumed with what happened, and our passions lead us to act in ways we otherwise would find unacceptable. Anger then becomes toxic and controls our minds and hearts. The only antidote is forgiveness. To forgive is to regain our own inner freedom and to heal. When we forgive, we step out of a cycle of injustice and regain our freedom to love. In our thirst for justice we should never forget love and mercy. In the end, none of us can stand before the bar of perfect justice, we all seek mercy as well as justice. 

The other threat to our hearts is despair. What can we do when faced with centuries of injustice – indeed, injustice stretching all the way back to Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel? First, do not look too long into the Palantir. The Palantir is an object from the Lord of the Rings used to see what is happening far away. One of the characters in that story, a leader of a nation, looks into it and sees the evil surrounding and besieging his nation. He sees only the evil, not the good, and amidst that darkness, he falls into despair. His despair cripples him spiritually and prevents him from fighting for the good. The same can happen to us. Through the Internet, we can see what’s happening all over the world at any moment, and the sheer volume of evil and darkness can spiritually cripple us too. Despair is stalking us and we must make sure that we grasp for hope instead. Do not focus solely on the darkness! Do not let it fill your mind and sow despair within you. Stay focused on Christ and His victory over sin and death. He is our hope. 

Hope is not simple optimism – sometimes the pessimists are right. Christian hope does not believe that we are immune from suffering or evil in this life, but that because of Christ’s victory suffering and evil never have the last word. No matter what crosses we may endure, the promise of resurrection stands before us. To possess this hope is to trust in God, even when events appear hopeless in human terms. When Christ was dead upon the cross the disciples could not imagine the resurrection, but it was coming. We must fix our hope on Christ our savior, rather than submerging our minds into the darkness of this fallen world. Do not look too long into the Palantir! Look instead to Christ.

Hoping in God also relieves us from having to be the savior of the world ourselves. It is easy to be overwhelmed by the immensity of evil and feel powerless. But as an individual it is not our place to heal the entire world. We are not the savior of this world; Jesus is. If we place the burden of the whole world on our shoulders, we will be crushed. Instead, we must focus on what is before us, what is within our sphere of influence. That starts with ourselves and then extends to those with whom we share our lives and then to the duties we have in the world. That is where we should focus our efforts. To go beyond that is to invite despair because we are holding ourselves responsible for something vastly beyond our power or ability. Focus on what God places before us, seek holiness ourselves, and love those whom God has placed in our lives. Trust that God will take care of the rest, for He is our savior.

We, unfortunately, live in a time when truth has become a casualty to power. Our culture has relativized truth to power – what is true is what is useful to me. That is why we see so much naked hypocrisy in politics. 

We who follow the God who is Truth must be different. We must be people of integrity, people dedicated to the truth. Do not make political expedience the standard of truth. We must resist allowing the ideological blinders of our age to blind us. Do not be cowed by what social media demands we believe this minute. Instead, look to what we know to be true in our own lives and experience. Place trust in what you yourself see in the real world before trusting the creations of virtual reality and the media. Resist pat explanations that paint a complex issue in an overly simplistic light; resist political spin that demonizes those with whom we disagree, ignoring their dignity and denying any goodwill on their part; resist believing simply whatever makes life easier, going along to get along. Honoring the truth is not easy, but we as disciples of the God of Truth are called to a high standard. 

Take as a model St. Thomas Aquinas. He asked hard and uncomfortable questions even about his own beliefs. St. Thomas’s greatest work consisted of thousands of pages of probing and difficult questions about the faith, and only through a similar process can we know not only what we believe but also why. Always look for what’s true in the positions of those with whom we disagree because they often see truths we are overlooking. Venerable Bede said that we need to learn to pluck roses even from the thorns of erroneous beliefs. It is far easier to simply brand those with whom we disagree as wicked people, but that leads us to neither truth nor love. 

We must be a people conformed to Jesus – people who seek love through truth rather than power through hate. To change a culture of hate, a culture that fetishizes power and death, we must change our hearts to love in truth. There is no short cut or simple political solution. Sin and death were not overcome through raw power and violence, nor through political skill, but through Jesus Christ giving His life for us out of love. We are called to follow in Christ’s footsteps – giving ourselves in love as He did. That is how evil is defeated.

Let us recognize the fundamental truths about who we are. We are a people possessing human dignity because we are made in the image of God and called to share in His divine love. Let God transform our hearts to live that truth. Christ tells us the way: love God before all else and our neighbors as ourselves. Everything depends on that.

A saint particularly suited to our times is St. Martin de Porres. I encourage you to look into his life and how his holiness gives us a model of unity through love. What St. Martin did was only possible through the grace of Jesus Christ, and we should ask St. Martin to intercede for us, to make us capable of the unifying love he exemplified. For that purpose, I’m proposing that we build a shrine to St. Martin de Porres at St. Joseph. We can commission a new statue to St. Martin dedicated to unity through love, especially racial unity. If you are interested in this project please let me know.

May God bless our city and nation, may we find unity in love and strive for holiness together,

Fr. Boniface

PS: While I wrote an overly long letter, some Carmelite nuns wrote the same thing so much more elegantly and in so many fewer words. Check them out here.